


Galvanism

by Faranae



Series: Watch Your Step [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Explicit Language, Gen, Missions, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 02:55:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11568840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faranae/pseuds/Faranae
Summary: This work is a collection of side-stories written to offer a small glimpse into the Watch Your Step canon. These events all occur prior to the plot of the main fic, but a recommended chapter will be listed in each story if you would prefer to avoid potential spoilers.To separate Agent Snare from the reader-insert character in Watch Your Step, these side stories are not written in first-person. Each focuses on the perspective of a different character.





	Galvanism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you enjoy the first of several planned stories, and the answer to a question a lot of you have been asking me for quite some time: 
> 
> “What happened in Moscow?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is highly recommended that you read [Watch Your Step](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7813876/chapters/17832577) up to at least [chapter 23](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7813876/chapters/25725261) to avoid spoiling anything for the main story.

The devastation is beautiful, in its own way.

Junkrat marvels at the way the pillars of smoke disperse and bleed into a sky that looks like it’s on fire itself from the setting sun. He jumps out of the transport, the chilly evening sending gooseflesh up his arms despite the body heat he usually radiates.

They’re in some kind of park, he thinks; The greens are too well-groomed to be anywhere else. The clearing is full of emergency vehicles and flashing lights, men and women in uniform shouting at each other as they attempt to organize. He nearly loses interest as soon as he realizes they aren’t speaking English, but a familiar shock of pink hair catches his eye.

Zarya pushes her way back to the Orca through the crowd of emergency services, fury written on the woman’s features as he gives a half-hearted wiggle of his fingers in greeting.

“Evacuation is complete,” she shouts at the transport over the crowds. “Whatever zese metal monstrosities are looking for, it has nothing to do vith death of humans.”

“How the hell did they even get here?”

Ahead of him, Snare surveys the shattered buildings herself, fingers tapping at the empty air in front of her as she does hell-knows-what with that bot of hers. The light glitters off her suit like it would shattered glass and he squints as the light reflects at him. Her shoulders are square and tense as she works. She’s angry, he’s pretty sure; She doesn’t want to be here any more than he does.

“If our allies know, they have not shared that information,” comes the reply from behind him. “Excuse me please, Junkrat.”

He shakes his head slightly to focus his thoughts and sidesteps, allowing the doc and the big bloke in armor through. He hobbles to where Hog is giving his scrapgun a final check before they get into the thick of it. Just in case.

“How the  _fuck_ ,” Snare hisses as she stomps back towards the Orca, “does an entire pod of these things make their way from Siberia to Moscow completely undetected?” Her voice drips with suspicion as her helmet turns towards their chaperone. “The district is completely trashed! This shouldn’t have happened, with the tech you’re packing this far north!  _How did they get here?_ ”

“You are lucky ship is intact,” Zarya shoots back, her lips curling into a lazy grin. “Zis  _tech ve pack_  as you say nearly blew you from sky like bug. Ve did not have to give you safe passage.”

“And for that we are very much grateful,” Mercy quickly interrupts in an attempt to rescue the conversation, which is once again about the limit of Junkrat’s attention span.

In the distance, through the smoke and ash and the haze, he counts three of the flying war-bots as they flit from building to crumbling building. Hog notices them too, from the big guy’s body language. A grin splits Rat’s face as he jabs a thumb in the direction of the city. His partner nods silently and pulls himself into the driver’s side of one of the smaller transports.

“Oi! If the civvies are out, I’ve got bots to scrap-” A tittering giggle bubbles to the surface and interrupts his own announcement, but he pays it no mind. “Nice as it is to listen to you lot bitch about nothin’.”

The others take his hint, filing one-by-one into the hovering vehicles. The German hulk in his power armor needs a transport nearly to himself due to the weight, which sets Rat off on another fit of cackling.

“Merc’ says the nearest Svyatogor is still a few hours out,” a voice says from beside him suddenly, causing him to jump and twist to face the woman who dared sneak up on him. It’s Snare. Of  _course_ it’s her, she’s always too sneaky for her own good. Going to get a shell to the face one of these days, he thinks to himself, if she keeps surprising him like that.

“I’m sure you have enough self-control not to blow my head off,” she laughs. He sits confused for a moment before realizing he must’ve spoken that last thought out loud. “I know you weren’t paying attention back there, but it looks like we’re splitting up.”

“Those guys,” the scout points to two transports loaded with heavily-armed soldiers, “are going to pull one away if they can. That leaves two for us.” She fidgets with the collar of her jacket as the vehicle tears down the road leading out of the park. He has to lean in to hear her over the wailing of the wind in his ears.

“Mercy is going with the cops,” she continues. “She’s a comm away if we need her but let’s face it-” She spreads her arms and gestures to the other transports surrounding them as they wind their way into the city proper. “-We’re pretty beefy. I think we can handle a few little hunks of metal without a babysitter, eh?”

He’s pretty sure Snare is shooting him a grin beneath that visor of hers, so he smiles in return with a dark gleam in his eye. That is, until the transport swerves and nearly tosses them both over the edge. The air is filled with pressure and a deafening hum as an armored monstrosity six times the size of the hovering jeep sweeps down and takes a massive chunk out of the building beside them.

“Did I say little?” He can hear the smirk in Snare’s voice as she smacks a hand down on his launcher, keeping him from firing at the omnic. “Hold up, he’s not ours.”

Junkrat watches as the two groups of military personnel pepper the rampaging omnic with cover fire while their team speeds around the next corner. Snare’s head suddenly whips around, leaning forward and peering over Roadhog’s shoulder at something a few blocks up.

“Picking up that same frequency, south-southeast,” she says then, the voice coming both from beside him and the bud tucked into his ear. “And I see one of them flying deeper into the Golyanovo District. Are they evacuated over there?”

“Affirmative,” comes Zarya’s crackling reply through the comms. “Continue and destroy third omnic. Ve vill be vith you shortly.”

“Right,” Roadhog grunts, speeding further into the destroyed city as the rest of the team veers off towards the second rampaging machine.

Damaged buildings give way to outright demolition as they speed deeper into the district, Junkrat cackling at the devastation caused by a few not-so-little bots. Whatever they’d been after, they must have wanted it  _bad_. He grips the side of the transport and cackles at the top of his lungs as Roadie tears through the ruins, as much a beast behind the wheel of a hovercar as he is of his own chopper.

Snare is standing in her seat now, gripping the back of Roadie’s armor tightly as she turns this way and that scanning for any trace of the omnic.

“SHIT-” She screams suddenly, twisting to look straight up as they pass a crumbling apartment building. Junkrat looks up and sees the beast of metal launch itself off of the roof before the deep hum of its propulsion hits his ears.

“Let’s go, ladies!”

Snare has launched herself from the speeding vehicle before he can even process the insult, running with the momentum as Hog pulls a violent u-turn and nearly crashes the transport into one of the trees lining the street. He kills the propulsion and metal screeches against concrete as they drop and skid to a stop.

The omnic crashes to the street, leaving a crater where the vehicle had been a brief moment before. Junkrat turns to make a smartass comment to Roadhog but finds the man already engaged in combat with the scrapheap.

“The legs appear to be fragile as we thought,” Mercy calls over the global channel on the comm, but Junkrat barely hears her as he studies the hunk of junk himself.

It looks like the bots tried to make a beetle, he decides as he runs into the fray, praying to himself the intel had been correct in saying these models didn’t have guns.

Sure enough, the omnic seems mostly defensive in nature; It thrashes about wildly, trying to crush and cripple with its many limbs and head instead of traditional weaponry. He fires his smaller shells wherever he sees seams and joints in the omnic’s armor, watching carefully for some sort of reaction and hunting for a weak point as Roadhog tries to take out the legs.

“Mind your metal down there,” Snare calls over the comm just as Junkrat catches a flash of blue and white on the bot’s back. Roadhog tears his hook from where it’s wedged in the knee of one of the legs and barely dodges a kick from another as he scrambles to get clear. No sooner is he out of the way than Snare drops off the omnic’s back into a nearby tree.

There is an ear-splitting  _CRACK_ and a flash of light as the bot staggers, electricity arcing over its shell.

“All teams,” Snare sounds out of breath as she comes over the comms once again. “There’s an exposed piston on the back of this model, near the base of the head. Can we work with that?” She drops out of the tree and her hands tap wildly in front of her at an interface he can’t see as she backs away from the omnic.

“You bet! Thanks love!” Tracer’s chipper voice calls in return. There’s some brief chatter in Russian as Zarya translates the tip for the military backup team.

“Oi, how long do we have ‘fore this piece of shit gets movin’ again?” Junkrat aims high and arcs his shells to land and explode as close to the neck as possible as the omnic twitches and spasms.

“About now?” Snare takes a running leap, rebounding off the wall of the building to curl herself around the omnic’s head. She braces her fist against one of its ocular sensors and fires darts from the launcher on her wrist into the glass point-blank. Sure enough there is a shriek of metal on metal as the machine lurches forward and rams its metal skull into the building in response.

Junkrat is almost worried for the kid until he sees her crouched on its back, once again pulling mines from her many pockets to affix to its shell. There is a booming synthesized scream as the bot realizes what is happening and begins to buck, attempting to shake her off.

“I’ve got enough juice for one more stun-”

There’s a garbled scream over the comm as the omnic gives a particularly violent shake and Snare nearly falls from its carapace. The robo-beetle lurches oddly after that, tilting to the side enough for her to regain her hold and continue placing her charges.

Rat runs up as Hog pulls away from a now completely mangled leg. It’s then he realizes that Roadie’s been using his hook to bend and pull the metal plating around the legs just enough to create the optimal spots for some quality demolition-related intimacy.

He swerves around an attempted kick, shoving one of the heavy-duty grenades from his harness into the joint of a knee.

“Get fucked!”

He barely manages to clear the explosion radius, shrapnel flying everywhere as the leg shatters. The metallic screaming the omnic projects is music to his ears, only intensifying as Snare hits the ground running behind him and another satisfying  _CRACK_ of electricity immobilizes the omnic a second time.

A quick glance to assure Roadie’s safety and he’s back under the beast again, rambling sweet nothings as he lovingly shoves explosives into every opening he can find in the once-armored limbs.

They explode in a rhythmic sequence as he hobbles his way out from underneath the bot, Roadhog gripping him by the harness and throwing him forcibly out of harm’s way when he doesn’t quite manage to clear the final blast. He rolls to a stop, none worse for the wear, and looks back to his handiwork.

Roadhog stands in the dying light of late evening, beside where the crippled omnic lay on its side. He takes a deep pull from one of his Hogdrogen cans as shrapnel falls from the closing wounds in his back. A few yards away, Snare sits against a splintered tree taking a breather. She notices him looking her way and shoots him a thumbs-up.

Everything is quiet. Junkrat is about to break the tense silence, but then:

“Idiot,” Hog exclaims, clipping the yellow canister back to his belt. “You were too close again.”

The tension snaps, Junkrat breaking into a fit of howling laughter as Hog growls and kicks the toppled omnic.

… And is promptly sent flying into the wall of the opposite building with a sickening crunch as the beast lashes one of its remaining legs out with full force. “Roadhog!” Snare screams, jumping up from her resting place and dashing to where the old man lay crumpled on the pavement.

Any other sound is drowned out as the deafening hum of the omnic’s thrusters warn of its impending takeoff. Junkrat barely registers as Snare pulls a fresh can from Roadhog’s belt and shoves it against the intake on his mask.

All he can focus on is the  _fucking_ omnic that won’t stop  _fucking_ moving and just hurt his best  _fucking_ mate.

Common sense is out the window. He shoves a fistfull of shells into his launcher and fires them in rapid succession, shouting incoherently as he runs at the omnic. He pulls his backup mine from his satchel and tosses it ahead, jumping up and over it before pressing his thumb to the detonator and launching himself rather painfully onto the omnic’s back just as it lifts off the ground.

“Oh no you don’t, you sonnovabitch-” Junkrat growls, holding on for dear life as the omnic gains altitude and suddenly lurches forward, taking him with it.

He tugs each and every one of the remaining grenades from his harness, pulling the pins and tossing them one after another into the gap at the base of the omnic’s skull. Not once does it cross his mind that this may be a bad idea.

And then there is fire, and force, and no air in his lungs.

He panics, flailing wildly as the machine seems to break apart at the seams, grabbing at anything he can get his hands on to anchor himself as the bot plummets, colliding with an already thoroughly-ruined building.

There is pain, but not as much as he’d thought there would be.

Everything is spinning and he nearly slips over the edge into unconsciousness, but he can’t. That can  _not_ happen. He’s aware of a shooting pain in his good hand as he holds onto both the rubble and his consciousness for dear life. He finally manages to suck a breath into his lungs and gulps the oxygen greedily.

His eyes crack open after what feels like years and he takes inventory of his senses: All remaining limbs accounted for, metal bits where they’re supposed to be, and ears ringing no more than usual. Aside from likely being bruised to hell, he feels pretty good. Lucky, even. He lets out a whoop of joy, which quickly sputters out as he looks down.

The chunk of rebar and concrete he’s managed to grab is dangling over what has to be at  _least_ a nine-storey drop to a pile of rubble.

“Aw, shit,” he growls under his breath.

“Fuck!” He shouts then, volume growing as he too-late realizes the consequences of his actions. “Let’s jump on the fuckin’ bot! Great idea! Fuckin’ award-winning! Tactical shitting genius!”

He twists as much as he can to see if there’s some way of dropping onto a nearby surface, but it is dusty, dark, and his eyes are watering with the effort to keep hanging on. And then in the silence he hears it: The distant taps of running on concrete.

“Jamison  _motherfucking_ Fawkes-” Oh, he doesn’t even have the heart to be mad at her for using his name. “-you had better not let go!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t  _dream_ of it!” He shouts down in annoyance. He’s just happy he’d reflexively caught himself with his good arm; the mechanical one would have given out under his weight at this point.

He can feel the blood pooling in his palm where the hunk of rusted rebar has dug into the flesh too far, but he only grips tighter to fight the building slick. No matter how tough he is, and how fun it looks, a fall from nine floors up is going to hurt if not kill him. He knows that.

He risks another glance down and spots a flash of porcelain white and electric blue as Snare flits into the ruined building. He holds his breath, listening carefully in a desperate attempt to pinpoint where she is by the sound of shifting rubble and the groaning of the structure.

“Really,” he hears her call from somewhere below. Her voice echoes through the skeletal remains of the city block. “What the fuck were you thinking, jumping onto that thing? Hog’s going mental, he’s going to kill you himself when he catches up.”

Hog is okay. That’s good. That’s very good.

“Got the fucker good, though!” He laughs weakly as he tries once again to get a better grip on the dangling rebar. “You comin’ up? Should see th’bits scattered about. It went up real good! It was beautiful!” He curses under his breath as his grip slips just enough to gouge his palm deeper.

“Oh I see it alright. A bit of it here, a bit of it there…” He can see her now, poking her head out a door a few floors down. Her suit glitters, reflecting light from a burning piece of former-omnic nearby. She disappears again briefly before reappearing at a run, springing off the remains of the wall and up to the floor below his.

“I’ve got an idea.  _Hang_ tight.” She disappears back into the structure and he rolls his eyes.

“You’re fuckin’ hilarious, sheila.”

“Keep up the shitty comebacks. I’ve been recording since three blocks down.” She’s somewhere on the next floor up, now. Is she moving extremely quickly, or is his sense of time skewed? He has no idea, but now he can hear the grinding groan of metal being stressed.

“ _Aussie Rodent Attempts Flight in Russia_ , should make debriefing entertaining at least.”

“Tick tock!” He spits as she pokes her helmet over the edge above him. In the dark he can barely make out her shit-eating grin through the mirrored glass of her helmet. “I’ve gotta piss somethin’ awful,” he grumbles and her smile only grows.

“Charming,” she laughs as she suddenly swings forward over the edge, torso and arms dangling just in reach. The concrete crumbles somewhat under her weight, showering him in dust and debris. She reaches down and takes his metal hand in hers, the segments of her suit clicking softly as they lock in place to reinforce her strength. The other hand snakes around his flesh wrist, allowing him to ease his grip on the rebar.

“Come on then,” she chuckles as he pulls himself up using her as a ladder. “You can take a leak once you’re up. I’ve got you.”

“I owe ya,” he mutters as he scrambles away from the edge. “Hey Hog-” he cuts short, fingers hovering over his now-empty ear. He must have lost his comm somewhere along the way.

“Let me get up here and you can use mine,” she says with a grunt as she swings upwards and begins tugging at the thick cables snaked around her ankles anchoring her to the broken edge. He follows the wires to the source, raising a brow as he realizes they’re part of the massive omnic’s innards.

Irony, he thinks the word is, that a part of the bot that tried to kill them would be used to save his life.

Hog will get a laugh out of that, he’s sure.

“You’re being uncharacteristically quiet right now, Rat. It’s freaking me out.”

She eyes him warily and it takes him a moment to register that he’s actually seeing her face through the reflective helmet instead of just reading her body language. Her expression is twisted with genuine concern despite her mocking tone, and that’s bothering him more than it should.

Is he being quiet, though? He supposes he is. He opens his mouth, the perfect sarcastic quip prepared, but stops short when he notices the remains of the massive bug-like omnic are twitching.

Snare notices too, her hands digging into unfortunately empty pockets for traps that have already been used up.

“Shit,” she breathes as what remains of the headless torso lifts itself up and slowly, cautiously, begins to crawl its way towards them despite its crumbling and torn legs. “I’m outta juice Rat, are you good to run?”

The omnic doesn’t give him the time to respond as it suddenly lunges forward, thankfully knocking Snare back into the broken wall instead of over the edge.

“How the  _fuck_ ,” he all-but screams as he throws a chunk of concrete at the battered husk, “-ain’t you dead?” He tugs at the the straps keeping his RIP-tire secure, pulling the mechanized hunk of rubber and P.E.4 loose and gripping the pull-cord tightly.

**“Rat!”**

Snare dashes in front of him as the omnic follows, movements once again slow and calculating. She grabs him by the harness on her way past and tugs,  _hard_. He barely has time to gather his tire into his arms as she pulls him through a door and deeper into the building.

“Are you trying to bring the whole building down with us in it? Half of the lower floors are missing! It’s not exactly stable!”

He frowns thoughtfully as he follows her between rows of what look like smouldering cubicles. “Yeah, that was the plan. Shit one though,” he adds, and he swears he hears her bark a laugh ahead of him.

The structure groans in protest as they wind their way down the levels of the building with the remains of the omnic hot on their heels, shredding through the walls like wet paper in its pursuit. “Nearly home-free,” Snare calls from just ahead of him. “The floor is out up ahead. It’s a two-storey drop but if you hop down, I’ll try to catch you.”

“Oi! I ain’t no damsel in distress! Just go!” He watches as she disappears through the torn floor with a nod. Behind him the wall gives way in a shower of drywall as the berzerk omnic shreds through.

“Alright you stubborn bastard,” he growls as he slams the tire to the ground and once again grips the pull-cord. His eyes are wide and full of fire as he starts the engine in one swift yank, the smell of petrol a welcome assault on his senses. He gives the tire a solid kick and sends it tearing across the room towards the frenzied omnic.

It takes him a split second too long to remember he should be escaping instead of watching the carnage, and by the time he pulls himself away to start running for the gap in the floor he’s being pushed forward by the blast. For the thousandth time today he finds himself thrown about and colliding with something hard, the air knocked from him as he lands.

Don’t pass out, he screams at himself internally as the edges of his vision pull and twist. His ears are filled with a scraping roar as he fights to hold on to consciousness. The ground pitches and rolls under his hands as he tries to right himself, fingers of steel coiling around his arms and crushing him up against something cold and hard as he finally slips under.

\-----

He coughs, trying to clear the dust caking his nostrils and lungs.

Everything is cold, and wet, and black, deathly still save for the sound of dripping water and muffled shouting in the distance, too far to make out.

He attempts to sit up and cracks his head against something hard instead, curling in on himself and cursing loudly. He gropes in the darkness, disoriented and trying not to panic.

There! A gap!

He screams wordlessly as he picks his way carefully through the claustrophobic darkness, pausing only long enough to discern the direction of the returning shouts. This isn’t the first time he’s gone and dropped a building on his head and he knows the routine; The game of life-or-death marco polo as he and Hog try to find each other in the carnage.

This might be the first time he’s been caught under a building quite this big, though.

The minutes pass as he carefully squeezes through gaps in slabs of concrete and twisted rebar, the back and forth shouts doing a number on his already sore throat. Finally stone scrapes against stone as the debris shifts and a wave of cool, fresh air hits him.

“G’day!” He beams as he climbs over a chunk of warped steel.

“Ah yes, you are unharmed? This is good!” It’s Reinhardt that speaks as he and Hog throw the chunk of wall they are lifting off to the side. “Your companion was concerned!” Hog just grunts and yanks more metal out of his way.

“Concerned is understatement,” Zarya laughs. Junkrat can see her reach to activate the comm in her ear. “Ve have Rat man. Your doctor is needed.”

“Nah,” he chips in as Hog pulls him up and out of the hole he’s in. “Feelin’ a tad bruised is all. Guess today’s me lucky day!”

“You look like shit.” Hog huffs, twisting him this way and that carelessly, looking him over for injury.

“I’m tellin’ ya mate, just a scratch.” He lifts his palm to display the gash from the rebar. “Won’t even need to bother ol’ angel-wings. Got that bot good.”

“Scratches do not bleed so severely,” Zarya states matter-of-factly. “Allow your doctor to heal you.”

He tilts his head in confusion as Hog lifts him by the shoulders, dropping him into the headlights of the transport and twisting his metal arm in front of his face. Junkrat watches the light glint off the slick red oozing across the paint and finally looks down.

His pants and chest are completely soaked, he knew that, but now he can clearly see that it’s in blood rather than some more innocent liquid like water or piss.

“Fuck, that’s no good.” Rat mutters, patting himself down and checking for any other injuries himself as Hog continues to look him over. He can hear the unstable remains of the building behind him groan and shift as Zarya and Reinhardt make their way over to where he and Hog stand.

It’s then that Rat realizes that someone is missing that really should be here, and then remembers the feeling of being pushed to relative safety.

“Shitting fuck!” he yells suddenly, yanking his arm out of Hog’s grip and dashing back towards the collapsed building only to be scooped around the waist by Reinhardt’s power armor.

“Zat is unwise,” Reinhardt laughs as Junkrat screams in frustration and struggles to escape. “Ze equipment can be replaced, my friend! Let us regroup! Angela shall tend to your wounds.”

“Fuckin’-” Junkrat twists out of the loose grip and bolts back towards the building. Zarya raises her hands and watches in amusement as he hobbles past her, choosing not to stop him as he tears towards the ruins. Roadhog gives her a nod of acknowledgement as he follows behind Rat with a flashlight in hand.

“One of you fucks make yourselves useful and toss me a-”

He cuts off and whoops victoriously as Roadie shines the light over the gap he’d crawled out of.

“A torch! Bless, I knew there was a reason I kept you around!”

“I ain’t gonna fit,” Hog mumbles in response as he passes the flashlight over. “Snare found ya?”

“She’s saved me bacon twice today mate,” Rat rambles as he lowers himself back into the hole. “She’s in there, so keep diggin’.” Roadie nods after him and beckons the other two over as a second transport pulls up and Mercy literally jumps out of the vehicle while it’s still in motion.

“You’re on standby doc,” is all Junkrat hears before the collection of rubble muffles the words again.

He keeps the flashlight focused below him as he follows the trail of blood back in the direction he climbed out from, finding it oddly more difficult to twist and weave his way into the wreckage than out of it. He curses under his breath all the while, checking constantly for smears of blood on the metal and stone to guide him slowly back, taking more care this time not to jostle anything unstable. 

It’s only when he reaches a void in the concrete barely tall enough to sit in that is positively slick with blood that he lifts the light to examine his surroundings proper.

“Aw, shit.”

It’s one thing to see a corpse. It’s another entirely to know the body you’re looking at.

He curses and drops the flashlight as his stomach lurches, voiding its contents all over the ground where he’s hunched on his hands and knees.

“Sheila what did you fuckin’ do,” he growls angrily as he wipes the sick from around his mouth. He retrieves the flashlight and examines the scene properly this time, ignoring the bile threatening to creep up his throat again.

She’s bent double, wedged up against a roof of shattered building materials. Her whole body is braced against the fallen ceiling in an attempt to hold it back. There are gaps in her suit where the material has been punctured from the other end, carnage poking straight through her like a fucked-up person-kebab. The occasional droplet of blood falls from the metal piercings into a pool below with a sickening plip.

He gives an arm an experimental prod and finds it is rock-hard, the segments of the suit locked together against the weight. The only parts of the suit hanging limp are her fingers and helmet, cracked and broken. He sits for a few minutes surrounded by her blood and his own vomit, wondering if he should bother yelling for the others.

“Shit,” he mutters. “Carked it right and proper, didn’tcha?” He shuffles farther forward in the small space, checking the stability of the surrounding debris before deciding the whole thing won’t collapse if he moves her.

“Oi,” he says as he pokes at her helmet. He knows the thing has some sort of AI, he’s heard her talk to it. “This thing still on? Gonna need the hunk of scrap unlocked if I’m gettin’ her out.” The glass flickers weakly, displaying some backwards text briefly before reversing itself so he can read it. He has to move the beam of the flashlight away to see the words properly through the glass:

ERROR! BCI : OFFLINE

ERROR! REV AI // OVERRIDE ACTIVE

POWER : 012% - SOLAR UNAVAILABLE

SHIELDS : 005% - LOCK ENGAGED

TEMP : 6°C EXT // 28°C INT

WARNING : MEDICAL ATTENTION REQUIRED!

WARNING : HEART RATE EXCEEDS 120 BPM!

He blinks stupidly at the text for a moment before a new set replaces it:

_**Speech synthesis unavailable in this mode. Agent Snare requires immediate medical attention. Shields and self-repair systems are heavily compromised; In the case of impaled objects, movement by unqualified personnel is not recommended.** _

“Oh.” His voice is laced with disappointment.

“Wait. Oh!  _Oh!_ ” He practically screams with joy as he realizes the AI is saying she’s still alive.

“Hang on sheila,” he exclaims, just in case she can still hear him. “If there’s one thing ol’ Jamison Fawkes is good at, it’s bein’ proper fuckin’ loud!”

He doesn’t stop hollering until Hog and the others break through the debris.


End file.
